By LAYLAN COPELIN
Austin American-Statesman
SMITHVILLE -- In some circles, J.W. Breeden is still known as "that kid."
As in, that kid who was fascinated by technology in preschool, who earned his first $50 hooking up a family friend's computer when he was 7 and who had his first business customer in the seventh grade.
As in, that kid who wrote his company's award-winning business plan while in high school and who juggled college with launching his company, LiveAir Networks, an Internet service provider that competes with corporate giants while providing broadband in rural areas where the giants don't offer service.
Today, at 24, Breeden estimates the initial $30,000 investment in LiveAir Networks has grown 25 times. He said he has 300 clients, including a chamber of commerce, a school district, nonprofits, businesses and residents, from Smithville to Giddings to La Grange and points in between.
Last year, LiveAir Networks was the Smithville Chamber of Commerce's Employer of the Year.
Broadband is to this generation of rural Texans as the railroads, farm-to-market roads and interstate highways were to their forebears: They get bypassed at their peril.
About 100 small, fixed wireless companies, mostly homegrown, are trying to fill the state's huge rural gaps, according to Connected Texas, the nonprofit that is mapping the state's broadband services.
To hear his customers, friends and former teachers, rural Texas just needs a few more "Jay Dubs" as he is sometimes called. It helps that many of them watched the precocious boy grow up.
"He was one of those kids you could tell had a strong head on his shoulders and knew what he was doing," Smithville City Manager Tex Middlebrook said. "He's a local boy. We have all the faith in the world in him."
Breeden runs the company from his childhood bedroom. His mother remains his no-nonsense banker. The company's servers hum in the air-conditioned attic of the family's house about four miles north of Smithville.
Sitting at the kitchen table with his mother, Breeden pets his 80-pound mutt, Laptop, saying he doesn't intend to stay small.
"We have a carrier mindset, not a mom-and-pop mindset," he says. "We think like the big boys."
LiveAir Networks offers broadband services using microwave technology, usually mounted on water towers, across 2,400 square miles in parts of five counties.
It offers Web hosting and management of information technology for companies. It is ramping up its Internet phone service and designing its first fiber ring for La Grange.
Breeden said he doesn't feel constricted by his choice to start a business in rural Texas.
"The world is rural," he said. "I can go anywhere the business demand is, and I can expand for a lower cost per mile."
Though Breeden was always precocious with technology, it was his frustration with dialup, and later satellite, Internet access that sparked his interest in becoming an Internet provider for his rural neighbors.
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